Dear LOA: How Can I Feel Better When Life Has Been Kicking Me In The Teeth?

by Melody Fletcher on February 6, 2014

Awesome Dudette asks: “How do you get in the right frame of mind for LOA to work when since birth (literally), life has continuously kicked you down the block, and around the block every year since? I really can’t even imagine what good feelings/energy/experiences would feel like, since that just hasn’t been my reality.

I believe LOA works, and have witnessed it in others’ lives; but I don’t have a personal well from which to draw. Help? Please?”

Dear Awesome Dudette,

Thanks so much for your awesome question. It’ll allow me to highlight one of the issues that so many people struggle with: How can you get to the Happy Shiny Puppy state when you feel like life has just kicked you in the proverbial nads?

Why the “usual” advice won’t work here

The standard advice in the LOA world will often be to just think better feeling thoughts. It’s a technique I’ll advise myself (it’s the basic idea behind the Vibrational Ladder), but there’s a caveat: You have to work with where you are. The mistake that most people make is to go right for the “positive sounding” words, instead of words that truly feel better.

Here’s one of those dirty little secrets: Better feeling words sometimes sound really, really ugly. If you’re truly in depression, for example, then the emotion that will take you out of that is anger, or even rage, and loads of it. When you’ve been dumped, you might actually feel better by thinking “I want to run that bastard over with my car!” But because this doesn’t sound all that spiritual, a lot of people won’t allow themselves to fantasize about squashing their ex with a steamroller, opting instead to affirm “I love myself; I am loved; I am enough; etc.”, only to get no freaking relief at all because they’re nowhere near the vibration of those words.

Acknowledge where you are

So, the first step in feeling better is to acknowledge where you currently are – how you currently feel. If you’re sad, that’s ok. If you’re depressed, angry, frustrated, feeling like you’d like to rip someone’s head off, that’s all good. Don’t judge where you are as not being “spiritual” enough. There’s no such thing. Everything is spiritual, because everything is made of spirit. Your emotions aren’t wrong, ever. They are valuable messengers, each and every one, and should be honored as such. If you can recognize their value, instead of judging and suppressing the negative ones, you’ll move through the turmoil a lot faster.

So, just admit to yourself how you truly feel. This might take a little bit of digging, so take your time and just sit with it for a bit. You might say, “I’m angry”. Ok, good. What about? If the answer is, “Because my boyfriend left me”, dig deeper. You’ll generally be angry because of something you think about yourself. You might be angry with your ex, but you’re actually feeling that way because it’s slapping you in the face with your belief that you’ll never be loved because you’re not good enough, for example. It’s possible that you’ll also have some beliefs about others (i.e. “All men are bastards”), but these will usually be secondary and have a lot less power. The really painful ones are the beliefs we hold about ourselves.

Reach for a BETTER feeling thought

Remember that BETTER does not equal positive. If you feel like you just want the world to end so your suffering will finally stop, you can’t reach for happy happy joy joy. You have to start wherever you are and move up incrementally from there. Finding that first thought is generally the hardest part. Once you get even a small amount of positive momentum going, the Law of Attraction will help you out by bringing you more and more thoughts that feel like relief.

But how do you know which thought to reach for? Well, a lot of this is done by trial and error, since it’s such a subjective process. No one can tell you which thoughts will work for you (unless they are reading your energy, but this requires 1 on 1 interaction). Books of affirmations can give you ideas, but they’re often aimed at people who are able to access “positive” sounding statements, not those who just want to stay in bed rather than face another day. I’m happy to give you as much guidance as I can, of course, just keep in mind that all techniques have to be tailored to the individual and the situation.

Be ok with the misery

Before you can reach for that better feeling thought, do your best to relax about how you’re feeling right now. If you’re judging yourself for not feeling good, you’re adding to the misery. Ok, so you feel like you hate the world. So what? How is feeling badly about that going to help? Do you think that beating up on yourself will actually cause you to spontaneously feel better? Don’t scoff; loads of people actually believe that. The idea that being a productive citizen of the world is just a matter of enough self-discipline, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, so to speak, isn’t entirely false, either. Because sure, if you beat yourself into submission, you can get shit done. But… and this is the big point, you won’t be happy. Being productive and actually feeling good are not the same thing. What’s more, using the “just force yourself to do it” approach, might get you some temporary movement and get other people off your back, but it will actually be detrimental in the long run.

The first step in feeling truly better and long term healing is to give yourself permission to feel bad. I don’t mean that you have to stop wanting to feel better (you can’t anyway, you could only pretend to do so). I mean, accept the fact that you’re temporarily miserable and just allow yourself to feel it. Your misery says nothing about you – it doesn’t make you weak or lazy or a bad person. You’re a human being going through an emotional experience that you were trained NOT to be able to deal with. Give yourself a break. So what if you’re sad? Be sad. Allow yourself to feel the emotion without judgment of the self. If you can do this, you’ll already start the ball rolling on feeling better. You see, as soon as you stop resisting what IS, you allow more energy to flow. And, since energy naturally rises unless it’s actively prevented from doing so, you WILL start to feel relief pretty much immediately. Disclaimer: Relief does not mean joy. It could easily feel like anger; but it will feel BETTER.

From I to YOU to I

The next step is to shift your focus off of yourself to others and cast a wider net. Abraham would refer to this stage as “going general”. If you’re currently blaming yourself, for example, start blaming others, instead. Remember that this is just a stage, not the end goal. You won’t be blaming others forever. Plus, since you’re doing this consciously, you don’t need to ever get stuck in any stage. So if you’ve been afraid to place your negative focus on others for fear of becoming a racist bastard or something, rest assured that’s not how that happens. Awareness, which is what you’re practicing here, is pretty much the opposite of prejudice. You can’t be prejudice AND be aware. Prejudice is what happens when you’re refusing to be aware of how you really feel. So, you know, you’re covered.

If you’re angry with yourself, be angry with someone else. You may want to start focusing on one or two people specifically. Feel the relief of that and keep on ranting (you can rant privately) about them until you’re no longer in danger of going back to self-directed anger or blame. Next, widen the focus to include society, or the Universe or God. You can even blame fate, even though it doesn’t exist. Whatever works. The idea is to blame a much larger, general entity, acknowledging that you are not alone, you are not the only victim. This may bring up a fresh wave of negative emotion, and that’s ok. You’re releasing your misery in layers. You may even want to reach out to some of the others who feel the way that you do. At this stage, misery really does love company. You can all rant together about the unfairness of the world. In any case, knowing that you are not alone, that you have not been singled out for torture by the Universe, that you are not somehow born under a dark star, should bring more relief.

The next stage will take you into more positive territory (which means you may need to leave some of those you commiserated behind). Stay general and start to look for evidence that not EVERYONE in the world is screwed, that some people are treated better (try to look for people you can identify with, don’t turn it into an US vs. THEM thing, that won’t help). For example, if you started off feeling depressed because you got dumped, you could turn that focus onto the guy who broke up with you, then onto men in general, and finally realize that not ALL men are bad. Some of them are quite nice. Hell, you even know a girl who’s going out with an amazing one. Huh. Go figure. If the girl you know is a supermodel though, keep looking for better “evidence”. If you can’t identify with those positive examples, they won’t help.

Once you’ve spent some time realizing it’s not an all or nothing game, that a chance for a positive outcome exists for your situation, you can finally begin to work on focusing on yourself in a positive way. This is where you make statements such as “Perhaps I can meet a nice guy. What would a really awesome relationship actually look like? Etc.” Keep in mind that you should always move from general to specific, from vague to more defined. So, in this example, you’d begin with “What if” or hypothetical questions or statements, before moving on to actual “I Am”, “I Will” or “I Have” affirmations. Keep these general at first, as well (“I am lovable”; “Some men adore me”), before moving on to truly specific statements such as “I am attracting more and more love into my life”, and “A gorgeous hunk of man is on his way to me, now.”

How long do you spend in each stage?

Keep in mind that these are general guidelines, not meant to be followed to the letter. How long you stay in each stage or whether or not you can skip a stage (you can’t, but when things shift rapidly, they will often smoosh together and make it seem like you skipped one or more) is entirely determined by how you feel. Sometimes, you can move through the stages in seconds. Other times, it can take months. It all depends on how much resistance comes up during this process and how willing you are to let go of old beliefs and fears. Are you truly willing to feel better? Most people would insist that yes, they are. But then, they’ll often refuse to let themselves off the hook, holding on to the belief that they are broken, instead of being willing to make a new decision and forgive themselves.

Stay in each stage and work it until you either start to get a little bored or your thoughts naturally morph to the next level. This morphing is normal and quite common if you’re willing to allow it. Remember that positive momentum I mentioned earlier? Well, that momentum ensures that unless you actively do something to keep the vibration down, your energy will start to rise and you will feel better. This is why people see positive changes in their lives just by meditating a few minutes a day. They are allowing the positive momentum to get going and take over and that energy immediately begins to manifest in awesome ways.

Don’t judge the “setbacks”

The last tip I have for you is not to be so damn hard on yourself if you have a “worse” day. If you’ve been feeling like crap about something for a long time, you’re going to have more than one belief to shift. This means that you can be feeling better, even significantly so, only to fall back into a funk. It’s important that you realize that this doesn’t mean that you’ve gone backwards. This is actually a sign of forward momentum – you moved your energy closer to what you want and you hit the next obstacle, causing the corresponding emotion to come up. Depending on how long you’ve been holding on to whatever belief has just presented itself to be released, this could feel quite traumatic. When that happens, re-read this whole post, and follow the instructions from scratch. Remember that nothing has gone wrong, it’s just that you’re right in the middle of your journey, and you’ve got some more cleaning up to do. But if you’ve been feeling better at all, chances are very good that you’ve been doing everything right and your apparent setback isn’t one, at all.

Bottom line

LOA principles do work, even if life has been kicking you in the teeth for a long time. The only reason it’s been doing that, believe it or not, is to get your attention. And the only reason it’s so hard to get your attention is because you were born into a time when kids were still taught the exact opposite of how the Universe actually works. Ok, most kids are still taught that, but the times are a-changing and I’m creating my reality, so I’m going to start talking about “those times” in the past tense. You were taught NOT to pay attention to your feelings, and in fact, to suppress most of them, even the positive ones. You were taught that conforming (pleasing others) is more important than doing what makes you happy. You were taught that happiness isn’t really possible. You were taught to sacrifice. You were taught that you are not worthy. You were taught that the real goal is to make a lot of money, and nothing matters as much. You were taught to judge yourself and others. You were taught that you were powerless. You were taught that it’s probably all your fault. You were taught to hate instead of love. No wonder some of you are in a funk!

But Who You Really Are knows that:

Your emotions are valuable messengers, and should NEVER be ignored or suppressed. They should be honored.

You have no control over how other people feel. You can only be responsible for how you feel.

Happiness isn’t only possible, it’s the goal.

Win/lose situations don’t exist. They are a human invention. If it’s not win/win, it’s lose/lose. We are generally always losing in an attempt to win.

You can’t not be worthy. The very fact that you exist is proof that you’re worthy. You are God, projecting herself into this body (and others) so that she may know herself from every possible perspective. You are God experiencing himself.

You and everyone else are perfect, just the way you are.

You are a powerful creator

Our natural state is love. Anything else is going to be painful.

Hang in there Awesome Dudette and give this process a try. Don’t expect things to get better immediately (no pressure!), just take it one day at a time and celebrate even small victories. Understand that crying jags and angry outbursts are not only ok, they’re signs of healing. Let them happen, along with any other emotions that want to come out, keeping in mind that as they do, you will have to actually FEEL them. I know… how scary. Do it anyway. It will help.

Well, this was timely. Some of you may have read my comments over last weekend on the blog post about rich people, only I had turned it into my own personal frustration over attracting love. Well, just as I had forgiven people from past and let go (and felt incredibly light in my soul on Monday)…on Tuesday I was notified that my position at my company had been eliminated. I am now out of a job for the 4th time in my life. While I know it’s a positive thing and the universe kicking my butt to get me to do something more fulfilling (the job had just become a paycheck to me) I will admit I’m not quite 100% myself again. I was sad on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday…mostly because I am going to miss some of the people I worked with and even the office park my company is in. I feel better today than I had the past few days, but I am giving myself a chance to grieve and get to a better feeling place before I really do job hunting (and I plan on determining what is it I *really* want to do, and will make out a list of everything I visualize in my ideal job.)

Allow me to tell you my story: I’ve always been obese, morbidly obese, the doctors said, and nothing I tried worked. The doctors said, you need some form of surgery to control that weight gain (I ate practically nothing and put on weight even when just drinking water). I was working very long hours for VERY LITTLE money, and my excuse had always been “I have too much work, I can’t take the time off, I’ll do it when work is not so busy”. So in June 2011 I found myself fired from the company I’d worked for 11 years. At the age of 40, morbidly obese, in a country where being over 30 and 5 kgs overweight meant your professional death. I knew I was pretty much screwed. BUT… I didn’t panic. I said to myself, “This is a sign from the universe that it’s time to better your life”. I had the surgery that summer. Now I’m 90 lbs lighter and I feel wonderful. I’m in excellent health and I’ve been enjoying things I wasn’t able to enjoy even when I was a teen. So… take this opportunity (because it is a MAJOR opportunity) and build your life for you. The way Pam wants to live it. The things Pam wants to be and do and have and feel.

I wish you the very best on your new, exciting, challenging adventure!

Sorry to hear about your job Pam. But you are right. This is a prime opportunity. Now you can go out and do whatever it is you want to do. Once you get into a better feeling place I bet your ideal job will find you shortly after.
I wish you lots of success and happiness!

I’m really sorry this happened to you. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about those things you said on the last post and I’m still bummed about it and cheering really strongly for you. It may be silly but I think that as long as your desire is not manifested I don’t think I’ll have any courage to even try with mine. My biggest fear is my desire taking too long to arrive and as long as there’s no solution to this I don’t want to go through that pain for years. And I don’t wanna see good people like you going through that either.

I also don’t understand why the process has to be so harsh and make some people lose things when it is mild and easy for some other people. My lucky friend I’ve talked about before just got a new job without having to be fired from the old one. I’ve seen people get new stuff without having to get old stuff ‘taken’ from them. In fact many books don’t even mention that this is an obligatory step. I don’t even have stuff to lose, if I try to manifest will life take survival stuff like food or housing from me? Grrr, why can’t the process be good and easy and fast for people like Pam and me too? If it has to take years or months of pain and losing stuff the more I’d honestly just rather give up on wanting, and I don’t even want that much.

Thank you, everybody. Mandy, I responded to you and Gooby last night on the other thread…it’s kind of buried in there but it was where you were asking why it was taking so long for me and is releasing that blockage all that was needed. I probably have some other beliefs to work on, who knows…and I guess time will tell. I don’t know why it hasn’t happened yet, but I do know other things come easily for me, perhaps because I don’t think of them as big of a deal or as big of a desire. I’ve made wanting a partner a REALLY BIG DEAL and maybe that’s the problem. I also used to say, “well, the LOA works for things that are really small, but it seems things that are really big/important take a lot of behind the scenes wheel turning and a long time to manifest.”

So, lately, I’ve been all about hitting the “easy button” like the old ads for Staples. This should be easy, and fun. Also yesterday a friend was telling me how difficult it is for my generation to find a man and I had to take it with a grain of salt and not allow it to affect my beliefs, that it should be easy.

Not sure if this helps you–I may be rambling a bit. But I did want to let you know I read all of your responses on the other blog post and I hear your frustration!

I must predicate this post by saying that I have been diagnosed with clinical depression. I am taking antidepressants for it. This fact may explain what occurred to me as I describe my experience below.
Once, when I was feeling sad and depressed, I gave myself permission to feel bad, then relaxed and allowed it to wash over me. Normally I fight the feelings and they eventually pass, usually within a day. This time, however, I let it stay too long and I started to feel more sad and depressed. It took me a several days to get myself back to being functional again.
The point I am trying to make here is this. I feel that one needs to be careful when exploring the sad emotions that you do not let yourself go too deep. Perhaps my experience was like it was because depression was already a problem.

Melody this was so perfect it ain’t even funny – well actually it is funny. I was coming to your site to search for that post – I forgot the exact name – called “What to do when the shit hits the fan” or something like that. Because I was in the middle of the shit hitting the fan. It’s been a while since its hit the fan like that but last night it was slinging shit everywhere. Then I saw this new post. It was just what I needed! I never did find the “shit hitting the fan” post though. I used the search box but I couldn’t find it. But this post totally did the job and I felt better almost immediately. Summer invites you to read..My Guided Meditation Experience – Days 14, 15 & Conclusion

I LOVE you Melody. Because of YOU, I didn’t give up. I started to dream again. I started to want again. I started to feel again. Now, I want to do everything possible, I don’t know WHAT. I want to dance, sing, run, play, sleep, learn, learn, learn and live in JOY and happiness. I don’t know what I want exactly but I know I want to feel more and more positive feelings. For me, you are and always will be the BEST person I met on earth. I am SO lucky to have you as my teacher. I feel like the luckiest person alive when I think I have the best teacher on earth. I feel so special. Thank you!

Melody,
This post was perfect timing for me. As you know, things are a real struggle for me lately. I feel better for a few days, then another aspect of my husband’s death hits me and I fall back into a funk. I was beginning to wonder if I am not making any progress. But, your explanation makes perfect sense. I just need to keep on letting it happen.

I have to say, letting yourself feel the [negative] emotions is just not that fun. But, in the past I would be throwing myself into some project or another by now, just to avoid the pain. Not doing that this time. I get it: without letting go of the negative emotions I can never truly feel good. In the past, I thought “letting go” meant avoiding the “bad” emotions [Abraham is not helpful on this issue- I love him, but he (or maybe it's Esther) really doesn't have the patience for anything sad or painful]. I actually think some of these speakers/authors have made it harder for me, but convincing me that I was wrong to feel anything negative. I thought I was flawed if I had any negative feelings, so I tried very hard to only think positive thoughts- like I could somehow “willpower” myself to never feel anything but good.
Your post is perfect for me, it reminds me to keep the faith. I will get up that ladder eventually. Thank you!

Love this post! Lately I have been doing so much releasing work, than when I feel bad in some regard I think, “Oh good, something else to shift.”

Speaking from experience as a person whose childhood could have been made into a series of lifetime movie melodramas, EFT really can neutralize triggering memories. I had a big leap, when I first discovered it.

Another practice I have found transformative lately is to pinpoint whatever limiting belief is causing a negative emotion. Then, I create a positive affirmation to the opposite effect. I repeat this affirmation like a mantra going into a meditative state. This causes the negative stuck emotions surrounding the belief to surface and release. It does not feel good, but I keep repeating the affirmation, sitting with the discomfort, until I achieve a state of neutrality, if I have an intense response, or positivity if it is only a light response. This process can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours for gnarly issues.

What I have found is that when I think of the subject again the ingrained negative emotions are gone, replaced by peace or even happiness or love or even just less “bad”. There are generally hundreds of interconnected conditional beliefs, however, so this takes some time.

For example, let’s say you are trying to improve your body image. You meditate on the words, I am beautiful, and afterwards you perceive yourself as less ugly, not beautiful, but better. You do not feel beautiful all the way yet, because you also have beliefs that being beautiful is dangerous, that people would not like you if you were beautiful, that you cannot be beautiful and intelligent, that it is vain and bad to want to be beautiful, that you do not feel comfortable saying no so being beautiful would give you attention that you cannot handle, that you have to eat certain foods or do certain exercises to be beautiful, that you have to have a different body type to be beautiful, and so on. To feel truly beautiful all of that needs to be released.

Also, your mind will protect you from feeling too much pain at once (hence the phenomena of repressed memories), so it may take several passes at an issue until it lets go entirely. It is also helpful, if you are overwhelmed with an emotion, to just meditate on the words,”I release this fear” (or anger, shame, jealousy, depression etc.).

This works in a few ways, in meditation you are going into a hypnotic state, and you are redirecting your brain synapses again and again until the new pathway sticks.

I have been doing this for a couple hours a day for a month, and it has changed my life. I feel automatically good with no effort or striving (you loa enthusiasts know what I mean). It just happens. I love it!

This blog was so so helpful and its crazy how your newsletter came up through my email today when I’ve been dealing with a lot of personal issues myself. The steps you’ve outlined on here I’ve actually been subconsciously doing before I’ve even read this blog. I first started out really upset, then I vented about it with my father who feels the same way I do but was able to give me advice as well, then earlier today I went to take pictures of a basketball game and while I was there I came to the conclusion that not everybody is the same. Now I’m reading this article and its reassuring that I’m actually taking the right steps to becoming more positive. Thank you.

…mum, what are negative feelings like?
Sweetheart, Negative feelings are like gas.
Releasing them is like burping – emotional burping.

Whats emotional burping?
…..

Is burping pleasant?
What? No.

Will emotional burp make me happy?
No sweetheart, no.
But it will give you relief so you can move on with your life.
Carrying all that gas inside is a burden.

What if I want to hold all that gas in?
Well you can and I have seen people done that. It created unneccessy pain and suffering.
Its not fun at all.
Come here, let me give you a hug. I will hug you so hard you will burp.

I have been unemployed now for almost a year. I am out of ideas, options, and hope. I have done every LOA procedure (for lack of a better word) that I can find. Nothing works. I’m just stuck and becoming very depressed. I WANT to work. I NEED to work. I am trying to leave an abusive marriage and I have 3 kids to support. I have a life in my mind that I want to live–one of bliss, happiness, abundance, prosperity, and love–and I can “feel” it, but I just never get there physically. I am actually wondering if transitioning to the other side by my own devices is my path of least resistance to happiness. I am going to just get mad today and stay there until I feel better. Maybe that’s my problem. I’ve been too strong for too long…?

I just found your site and trying to read all your posts. I have been recently introduced to LOA through a suggested book The Secret by my therapist.

See, 8 months ago the love of my life broke off our relationship due to being frightened to move to the next stage of our relationship (living together). We are in our 40′s and both have children that we each see 1/2 the time. At first the reason was logistics. 3 months later I hear that he has no feelings at all for me.

At that point I went into a serious depression. It didnt interfere with my job, but when I wasnt there, all I did was sit at home in bed and cry and cry. It was when my 14 yo daughter mentioned to me that I was scaring her that I realized I needed help. At that point I got on anti-depressants and sought out therapy.

It has been quite helpful in my progress. She helped me realize just as you said, some of the feelings of despair are rooted from your childhood and now I realize that. With the breakup, i wasnt really angry with him. I was disappointed, hurt, and the worst… I felt I wasnt worth unconditional love or worthiness. That is where the problem lies I believe. I have low self esteem and feel im not worth having “the love of my life”. I think I have been in such a low feeling for so long because I feel he was the only man that got so far into my heart that I was absolutely, no questions, no doubt that he was my soulmate. When he showed me that I wasnt his, just threw me to the past where I felt unworthy of love.

Like I said I have come a long way with therapy and been listening daily to positive affirmations, started meditation, and thought about trying LOA, but in another thread Im not sure Im either doing it right or throwing out a negative energy. See, there are many things I would like to bring to my life, but the most is true love so I have been trying to imagine myself with my true love with all my senses and feel happy while doing it. I think of this multiple times a day, I also think of all the happy things me and my ex did, and how wonderful it felt to be with him. The reason I use him in these thoughts is because he is what I think of when I feel love or want love. Im just not sure that my energy is that of positive or negative. I am still sad over the breakup, but desperately want to be loved. I just cant see to not think about it.

Please help me in understanding or what I can do about it. I think Ive been such a negative person my whole life that Im not sure I can ever turn that around.